Reveal of text using beat triggers

[sameloop]

Hi.

The title is a bit off - I couldn't quite think of a way to describe it.

Here's an example of what I'm trying to achieve:

You have some text that reveals itself letter by letter, in time with the beat of incoming audio, to reveal the full word.

The nearest I got was a mask which shrunk on the x-axis using a trigger modifier and wrap to limit it to the amount of letters. Of course, that's fraught with problems as a system and doesn't work at all how you'd want. I need full control of each letters appearance if possible.

I have had a good think about it, but my Magic skills are way too low, I'm afraid.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[Sadler]

Try something like this...
Text: H
Text: HA
Text: HAP
Text: HAPP
Text: HAPPY
Text: HAPPY!
All into an InputSelector with the index set to increment on the beat.

[sameloop]

Hi.
Yes, that was kind of my first idea, but I need the text to remain on screen once triggered. It seems like that will just show each letter one after the other, but with the last one disappearing. Maybe there's a solution to that?

[Terry Payman]

The Clamp modifier will do exactly what you need. Set the value just a bit higher than the highest index you need to show the full text. Below I've added blank text as Input #0, so that the scene will wait for a beat before showing the first letter.

HAPPY!.jpg (59.65 KiB) Viewed 4493 times

[sameloop]

Hi.

Thanks for that. It's cool, but not quite there - unless I'm missing something - what happens with that is that each letter disappears after the last one. Ideally I'd like them all to persist, so the word get's spelled out one letter at time (and each letter has a translate module for positioning along the screen) and you wouldn't need the whole word module. I could be doing something wrong, though!

[Terry Payman]

I'm not sure what you mean by "each letter disappears after the last one".

I've attached the project. You'll need to change the source in the Input Sources Window. ( I used an MP3 of OddJohn's track "Feel Good In My Neighbourhood" https://oddjohnfr.bandcamp.com/track/fe ... ghbourhood)

This project doesn't have letter positioning though - it's as shown in my previous screenshot, except I've change the scene order so that the text doesn't start loading as soon as music starts. You need to (somehow) select the HAPPY! scene first.

[sameloop]

Hi there.

Thanks so much - I downloaded your scene and saw what I was doing wrong straight away - each of my text boxes was a single letter.

Yeah, so it works. Nice one.

Of course, it's a great system for making anything appear. Great stuff.

[Sadler]

Thank you Terry for enlightening us (well, at least me) with this way of using clamp. I admit to having only considered this modifier appropriate to clamping audio and your advice has extended my perspective.

There is a feature request for a new module to allow the build up of inputs (i.e individual letters) for which this case is a good example but there are many others potential uses.

[Terry Payman]

Thank you Sadler, I hadn't thought of using the Input Selector module in this manner so my perspective is extended too!

Perhaps Eric will comment on the relative efficiency of ISF vs native Magic modules for the useful varieties of vision mixing in your feature request above. I guess we could prototype the functionality by coding some ISF ourselves.